Our People

Doctors, caregivers, employees and volunteers form the heart of our not-for-profit network. Every day, these talented, dedicated people partner to bring patients and communities the exceptional, compassionate care they deserve and expect. To build and strengthen our team, we provide a supportive and inclusive workplace that celebrates diversity and encourages creative problem-solving. We offer our employees competitive pay and benefits, as well as many opportunities to learn and grow, professionally and personally.

Residency program ranks among best

Sutter Health’s efforts to groom the next generation of family doctors—in critically short supply nationwide—earned honors in 2014. U.S. News & World Report recognized our Family Residency Program in Santa Rosa among the country’s top 10 postgraduate programs for family medicine. Through our partnership with Santa Rosa Community Health Centers, residents hone real-world skills caring for culturally and economically diverse patients in community clinics. They graduate proficient in surgical and obstetric care, emergency care and the treatment of common medical conditions, learning from faculty with wide-ranging expertise in preventive medicine, women’s health, older-adult care and cross-cultural issues. About half of the family doctors practicing in Sonoma County graduated from our program.

Edna Prieto, M.D., examines a community clinic patient as part of her training in Sutter Health’s Family Residency Program in Santa Rosa.

Leadership development honored

The National Center for Healthcare Leadership named Sutter Health among the nation’s top 10 health care organizations for leadership development in 2014. We earned the Chicago-based group’s BOLD—Best Organizations for Leadership Development—award for our work in nurturing new leaders to achieve excellence and improve the quality of health care in our communities. Through our long-standing Leadership Pathway program, physicians and employees at all levels of our organization enjoy customized opportunities for academic and experiential learning, coaching, relationship-building and leadership-skills development.

Caregivers train in healing arts

In 2014, more than 130 doctors and other Sutter Health caregivers participated in training to integrate healing arts therapies into patient care across our network. This first networkwide educational effort stemmed from the yearslong work of our Sutter caregivers in Santa Rosa, who discovered the powerful and tangible benefits of combining traditional medicine with complementary therapies designed to reduce stress and promote recovery in people dealing with disease and hospitalization. By offering techniques such as gentle touch, aromatherapy, guided imagery, deep breathing, noise reduction and deep listening, nurses and doctors across our network can personalize patients’ experience of care, while helping reduce their anxiety and pain.

Pulmonology fellowships offered

Sutter Health launched an innovative Bay Area-based fellowship program, the first of its kind on the West Coast, in 2014. The intense one-year course for physicians teaches interventional pulmonology, an emerging field within pulmonary medicine focusing on the use of advanced diagnostic and therapeutic techniques to treat patients with lung cancer, airway disorders and lung diseases. Fellows complete the program qualified to treat respiratory conditions with the most current techniques and minimally invasive technologies. Our Palo Alto Medical Foundation created the program in collaboration with El Camino Hospital in Santa Clara County and the University of California, San Francisco, Fellowship Program.

Employees influence workplace excellence

In 2014, Sutter Health celebrated 15 years of conducting our annual employee-opinion survey. Through this experience-of-work evaluation, our employees help us identify and solve problems in a creative, collaborative way, so Sutter Health can continue as an exceptional place to work, practice medicine and receive care. Our 2014 achievements as a workplace of excellence included maintaining a financially healthy pension plan for our workforce of 48,000 nurses, clinicians and employees and continuing to offer competitive pay and benefits. Also, to support the educational goals of our employees’ children and grandchildren, our Sutter Scholars program awarded scholarships to 140 students attending community colleges, four-year universities or graduate programs.